


force of habit

by mintakablue



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Has OCD - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, so he already knows his meds are gazebos, takes place post-movie, wow i didn't think that was a tag that existed but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 10:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13409541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintakablue/pseuds/mintakablue
Summary: It was not the imagined illnesses—he knew now what a placebo was, but he had not come up with the courage to stop taking them, these little sugar pills that didn’t even taste sweet. It was an overwhelming sense of dread and horror that if he did not take his pills on the hour as the watch beeped that perhaps he would really drop dead on the spot. Or his mother would (not that he didn’t want her to at times.) Or anyone in the Loser’s Club.





	force of habit

            “Let’s play a suh-sp-s-speaking game.” Bill said one afternoon where the rain came down in slow and steady sheets. Not a storm, but heavy enough that playing outside or biking was an impossibility. “I learned it from t-the sp-suh-speeee—” he concentrated, his mouth stretching into that _ee_ noise, “Speech th-therapist in Bangor,” he finished.

            It was not unusual for Bill to bring games from Bangor and even if they were sometimes just speaking practice for him, the others would play along because they all loved Bill and besides, they were fun when you got down to it, especially on a dull day such as this. Today, the others consisted of Richie and Eddie because Mike was bringing in the last of the potato crop before it flooded and Ben and Stan had decided to go to the movies and watch a double feature horror movie that Richie had already seen. So, it was just Richie who was hanging off the couch upside down and Eddie, sitting on the floor with his back very straight, drawing very straight lines in a tiny notepad.

            “What’s it this time, is it just another A ate an apple pie, B baked an apple pie, C—!” Richie banged his head as he lost his balance. “Croikey!” He rubbed his head as Eddie snickered, watching him right himself.

            “No, it’s a-a-a game where you come up with adjectives for each other and if you cu-cuh-c-co-come up with longer ones then you get m-mm-more points.” Bill held out his hand. “Could I buh-borrow your notepad? I wanna keep track of the points.” Eddie lightly tossed his notebook.

            “Don’t rip the pages out without using the perforations, I really don’t like the little paper bits.”

            “I k-know, Eds. You’re very par-tic-uu-lar.” Sometimes Bill would slow down on a word to get through it, but his eyes brightened. “T-that’s four points for me. It’s based on s-syl-syl—”

            “Syllables, I got it.” Eddie thought for a moment. “Okay, here’s one for Richie: lascivious.” He had read that in a book recently and had to look it up in a dictionary, but now that he had it, he was determined to show it off.

            “That’s not even a real word, innit? ‘Snot even a true and good word under the Queen, I say, the Queen herself!”

            “Yes, it is, dummy, how do you not know that word?” Eddie was keenly aware that he had looked up the phrase himself only two days before. He added, “That’s—that’s not even a real accent.”

            “Whatever, you just wanted three points to yourself.”

            “That word was clearly four syllables.”

            “Well,” Richie searched for another voice in his repertoire, but opted for a lewd word instead. “You’re just _anal_.”

            “Are—are you calling me an asshole?”

            “That’s a real adjective, it m-means you’re k-kind of uptight.” Bill dutifully marked two points for Richie and four points for Eddie.

            “Means you have a real stick up your ass. If I put a diamond up there, it’d turn to coal.”

            Eddie sighed. “Other way around, it’d be ‘if I put a piece of coal up there, it’d turn to a diamond.’ And I don’t appreciate that.”

            “What’d I say! Anal.” Richie sat back with a smug smile. Bill couldn’t help but laugh a little too.

            “I’m not uptight.” Eddie retorted, defaulting to the less rude word. “I just actually pay attention to things. Unlike you.”

            “Mush-mouth.” Richie said and Bill chuckled again, adding two more points, knowing he was only poking fun.

            “Trashy.” Responded Bill and Richie howled with laughter. Eddie remained silent.

            “I’m _not_ uptight.”

            “Obsessive.” Richie directed another smug smile in Eddie’s direction, which quickly dropped as he saw the look in his eyes. “Okay, geez, what?”

            _Compulsive_ , thought Eddie and suddenly his whole face started burning with secret shame, the shame of a real illness that none of the vitamins or supplements would get rid of. Disorder. And Eddie had it.

            Eddie had been checked once, twice, a million times over at the doctor’s. He would sit, bored senseless, as his mother prattled on about the possible allergies he might have, how his asthma had “compromised” his physical education, and the other laundry list of possible ailments he had. Delicate, delicate little Eddie. At times it nagged on the back of his conscience, that he was not so sick as his mother let him believe. But when she pleaded with him to take pills on the hour it was desperate in a way that unsettled him deeply if he didn’t.

            As if he would die if he didn’t.

            It was not the imagined illnesses—he knew now what a placebo was, but he had not come up with the courage to stop taking them, these little sugar pills that didn’t even taste sweet. It was an overwhelming sense of dread and horror that if he did not take his pills on the hour as the watch beeped that perhaps he would really drop dead on the spot. Or his mother would (not that he didn’t want her to at times.) Or anyone in the Loser’s Club.

            He wanted to yell at them sometimes, say “Don’t you get that I’m protecting you, by doing this? I’m doing this for you guys!” Especially when he’d say “Beep beep, Richie” and Richie would tap at his wrist incessantly and go “Beep beep yourself, Eds.”

            Generally, it was a force of habit. But sometimes when he took a breath in on his inhaler and the menthol taste started to fade, his brain would start to scream “Not right! Not right!” and he would suffer another blast of the nasty taste just to make sure the number was right. If he didn’t count three on things, it was just as bad stepping on a crack in the sidewalk. Some days, it was as bad as watching your friend start to choke and wheeze instead, all because you didn’t just take another hit on your stupid inhaler.

            If it was a really bad day, he would suddenly be struck with a violent and aggressive thought. _Push Bill off his bike_ , his brain would taunt and Eddie’s mouth would become a very very straight line as he fought off the thought. _Punch Ben across the face_ , and he hated himself for it, took two aspirin and steadied his hand as Ben smiled, oblivious to the shadow of a thought that had passed through Eddie’s mind. These were the days that his mother would diagnose a phantom fever and Eddie would be glad to clamber into bed and simply lay there, fighting those dark and evil thoughts off in solitude, his friends safer when far away from him.

            These were things he did, days he had, without a second thought until he had thumbed through the DSM in his doctor’s office as his mom babbled about his vitamin intake. He used to have great fun, reading descriptions with a little shiver of fear, thinking he was sane. But when the book fell to obsessive compulsive disorder, the little shiver of fear turned into his heart pounding, the blood rushing in his ears.

            “You look quite red, Eddie, did you get stung by a bee? Did you—” His mother didn’t get a chance to finish as he slammed the book shut.

            “It’s nothing mommy.” He lied. The blood was still rushing, now roaring, the hateful little voice in his brain whispering _if you lie like that you’ve got to flip the light switch in the bathroom three times_ _or maybe more depending on how bad your lie is._

            Obsessive. Compulsive. Disorder.

            “I didn’t mean to hit a nerve, sorry Eds.” Richie adjusted his glasses, peering at Eddie with those magnified eyes.

            “It’s nothing.” Eddie gasped, took a hit on his inhaler. Then another. Then another for good measure.

**Author's Note:**

> i also have OCD so i thought i'd like to write a fic exploring eddie kaspbrak having OCD since people tend to center it around him being a bit of a germophobe. out of all the people i've met with OCD in my life (which is a few considering i've been in support groups) there aren't actually too many germophobes but that tends to be the overrepresented side of OCD (not that it isn't valid). i just thought that isn't how it works for everyone and so i'd like to write a character that had my kind of OCD. three's my special number too!


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